Identity Design
How do you grow an open source brand? We're excited to share our case story about our work with open source leader NGINX. NGINX is the world’s most popular web server and web proxy for high traffic websites—from Airbnb to Netflix to Uber. NGINX currently powers
Positioning
If you've spent any time in the technology industry, you've probably come across some seriously bad brand names. And what has always particularly bothered me is that many tech companies can't just stop with one bad brand name—they attempt to create new brands
Positioning
Last week, I watched The Power of Introverts, an excellent TED Talk by Susan Cain (she also has a book out on the same subject called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking).In her talk, which has been viewed almost two million
Brand Community
Once you've identified the key communities you think it is important to engage with, the next step is to identify the people you'd like to represent your brand within these communities. For simplicity, I like to refer to these folks as brand ambassadors. How to find
Strategy
I tend to read a lot of business and marketing books (stop laughing at me) and over the past few years, I've noticed one important group that I don't think is being served well by the existing books out there: small business owners.Some branding books
Strategy
It has become a truism in marketing that you should stay focused on your customers. In most of our organizations, we are attempting to sell something to make a profit. We need customers.But I often use the word community in places where most people would use the word customer.
Strategy
One of the key concepts behind the ad-free brand approach: building your brand from the inside out, starting with the folks who are likely to know and care most about the brand—the employees.When building the brand from the inside out, the goal is to embed the core positioning
Strategy
My publisher recently filmed a series of short video interviews where I discuss my new book The Ad-Free Brand. This is the third in a series of tips from the book, entitled "The Community is More Than Just Customers."
Strategy
My publisher recently filmed a series of short video interviews where I discuss my new book The Ad-Free Brand. This is the first in a series of tips from the book, entitled "To get the brand out, get the community in."
Strategy
My publisher recently created a series of short video segments where I discuss The Ad-Free Brand. They were filmed in our New Kind office with a laptop internal video camera and Skype connection, so keep your expectations low (and certainly don't confuse these videos with the kind of
Strategy
In my last few posts, I shared some tips for collecting and synthesizing the brand research you will use to design positioning for your brand. In this post, I'll share three approaches to designing brand positioning I believe will work for the majority of brands: • The lone designer
Strategy
In my last post, I shared some of the sources of data that you can use to inform your brand positioning. But once you've collected all of the information you can get your hands on, what do you do with it? In this post, I'll share